Gah… Figures, the one morning I don’t check, the damn post doesn’t… Sorry!
Well, I played hooky yesterday afternoon, and snuck out to meet Stretch at Manassas Airport to get a look at a piece of history…
As always, clicken to embiggen…
Front view
In this picture, the older boy in the red shirt was asking his mother if he could go next, but the little boy was up the ladder and gone… LOL
Aluminum Overcast is a B-17G that was delivered in late 1945 and never saw action in the war. It was restored and donated to the EAA in 1993 and flies and conducts tours around the United States. Of the 12,732 B-17s produced between 1935 and May of 1945, 4,735 were lost during combat missions.
When you first climb in, to your left is the Navigator table, and forward of that is the bombardier position. The bombardier had the only swivel chair, and was apparently adapted from a secretarial chair… The wooden box on the right is the ammo box, which only held 600 rounds. There was one for each gun position.
The bus driver’s position… They controlled the four Wright Cyclone R1820 radial engines, and did their best to keep the crew alive.
The ‘plank’ as it was called. The only way from the front to the back of the airplane through the bomb bay. Of note those rails weren’t IN the actual wartime birds. And as an OBTW, 80lbs of weight on the bomb bay doors caused them to automatically open…
If you look at the picture above, you can see some yellow writing on the forward bulkhead of the bomb bay. This is a close up of that… It’s one of two (one port, one stbd) HAND CRANKS for the main landing gear! So no rails, 80lbs would open the bomb bay doors, and you had to lean out with nothing to hold on to or brace with and hand crank the gear up or down… Lovely…
Radio operator’s station, the radio was an HF, with another stack of radios behind and on the right side of the fuselage.
And moving aft we come to the waist gunner’s position… These are in the K-6 mounts, which were used to allow the guns to function through the plexiglas inserts. These have been modified with the Sperry Automatic Compensating Sight, which required the gunner to enter the altitude, airspeed and then keep the target in the optical window so the gun could ‘auto correct’ the bullet flight.
A close up through the sight. Sorry for the lousy picture.
Looking forward in the tube from the aft door, you can see the offset 50cal waist guns. On earlier models, there were no windows, so the waist gunners were in the slipstream at all times.
The tail gunner… Main requirement? LITTLE! 5’2” and around 100lbs was the ‘average’ tail gunner… I cannot imagine trying to crawl back through the fuselage just to get there, much less try to crawl forward under fire/maneuvering…
And if things went totally South… This was the only way out for the tail gunner… That door is on the starboard aft part of the fuselage, wrapping down the side of the fuselage. It’s ‘maybe’ 2 feet high.
A view from the rear, pretty airplane! And VERY well maintained!
And the ball turret. This one too another little skinny guy, who effectively had to lay down and prop his legs up over the guns and shoot between his legs. He also had the Automatic Compensating Sight (It was actually developed for the belly gun).
You can go to the EAA site HERE, and watch and hear a video of Aluminum Overcast in flight. Beautiful music (if you’re an aviator)!
Kudos to the EAA and the dedicated volunteers that not only maintain the bird, but the ground crew that travels with the bird. Without these fine folks, NONE of this would be happening.
The Story of the Memphis Belle, from 1944…
